


The Path You Must Walk

by nymja



Series: Do or Do Not [8]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-29
Updated: 2016-01-29
Packaged: 2018-05-17 01:51:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5849308
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nymja/pseuds/nymja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You are here because it is time for you to kill the Jedi.”</p><p>“…Luke Skywalker.”</p><p>The next word drops, has a gravity all its own. “No.”</p><p>--</p><p>Kylo Ren has a choice to make.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Path You Must Walk

**Author's Note:**

> Palpatine had a flower garden, so I imagine he got it from somewhere :P
> 
> Part of the Do or Do Not series, but can be read as a standalone. Two more to go!

“Do you remember the promise you made to me?”

Kylo Ren keeps his head bowed down. He’s kneeling, his forward weight resting on the fist in front of him. His breathing is a tight, strained motion—a result of the recent lightning. His robes are laced with smoking, jagged holes. “Yes, Supreme Leader.”

Snoke stands before him, head tilted. “You have failed that promise.”

“Forgive me.”

“You know I will not.”

Kylo closes his eyes, pained. At having disappointed Snoke. At having been _weak._

“You were not ready,” Snoke observes in a clipped tone. “A misplaced moment of optimism on my part, but it can be remedied. Stand, Kylo Ren.”

He pushes with his feet, his legs too weak to carry the motion. With a strained gasp, Kylo Ren manages to stand, shoulders slumped forward. Before him, Snoke looks down with narrowed eyes. He is tall, in life, a half foot above Kylo. His torn lips rest in a frown.

“Follow,” he orders, turning toward a door.

Kylo Ren does.

\--

The smell of flowers is not what he expected, but it hits him all the same. Snoke walks through the temple courtyard until he stops in front of a bed of brightly colored ones, a spray of pink, yellow, red, and white. Kylo does not understand the deviation from their regular meetings, or why Snoke would stare at something as common and insignificant as a daisy. But the Supreme Leader does, his index and middle fingers cupping the petals of a white one.

“I am showing you my private garden,” Snoke states, his pale skin somehow darker than the flowers. “In hopes that it might help you understand the cost of your weakness.”

Kylo’s hands tighten at his sides, the reprimand feeling like a slap. “I only aim to serve you and the First Order, Supreme Leader.”

Snoke’s colorless eyes slide to him. “I have no doubt you believe that, Kylo Ren. But you are still tethered. Still _suffocating._ ” He walks forward, the daisy slipping out of his grasp. Kylo Ren stays a step behind. Snoke turns, a cold hand cupping Kylo Ren’s cheek. “You stunt your own growth, searching for the sun when you are meant for the shade.”

He looks away in anger. “She doesn’t mean anything to me.”

Snoke scoffs, patting his face before withdrawing. “Then why, Kylo Ren, is she _alive._ ”

He doesn’t have an answer. But it’s clear Snoke expects one. “I was…confused.”

“A natural inclination. But one it is time to leave behind you.”

“Supreme Leader?”

But Snoke’s attention is drawn back to the daisies, his head bowed down to stare at them. “I know something of gardening.”

He stares, not certain where this conversation is going but not wanting to question it. Everything Snoke says has been true, everything Snoke’s done has been to help him reach his potential.

“Flowers are delicate things,” he starts, his long hand extending until it reaches the base of one—deep yellow in color. “They require the right conditions to live. Too much nourishment, too much light, and they wither and die.” His fingers dig into the soil. “And when they grow together, there comes a point where the roots must be cleaved.” And pulls, the flower tearing from the earth.

Snoke turns to Kylo, extending the hand bearing the flower. “In order to encourage the better blossoms to bloom, you must remove the ones which are lesser.” He pinches a petal between translucent fingernails, pulling it away. “To leave a flower is to let it die.”

Kylo stares at it. The yellow petals gradually falling to the ground in slow, crescent falls. Something cold and twisted curls in his stomach.

“Do you know why I brought you here, Kylo Ren?”

He meets the eyes of his master. He bites down into his lower lip to keep it still.

Snoke nods. “It is time for you to remove the deadened bud and kill the Jedi.”

Not even the modulator can mask his unease. “…Luke Skywalker.”

The next word drops, has a gravity all its own. “No.”

Kylo watches, as Snoke claws the hand holding the daisy into a fist.

\--

Hours later, he sits.

His legs are too long for the bench he’s on, and they fold out from him, one bent at the knee. He bows over, hands braced on either side of him as he stares ahead. Sweat has soaked every inch of him, his formal robes discarded in favor of a simple, grey tunic. His hair obscures his vision in wet tendrils, as he tries to breathe through his back.  He sits like an eye in a storm, surrounded by torn wall paneling and severed wires, smoking training droids and burned grates.

Rey is going to die.  
It’s been decided.

He doesn’t blink. His shoulders move in a slow circle as he straightens his back, every bit of him mechanical and sore. Exhausted. But he still feels it, circling around him like scavengers above carrion. Because that’s what she is, what they are. She’s something that tears until it finds a weak point, breaks something until it can be taken. The memories she gave him, if they are even real, are beaks in the muscle, widening and splitting until light can be let in.

He doesn’t understand what isn’t his own. He doesn’t understand why _Ben_ would allow a little girl with no immediate talent to live when Kylo Ren knows that all the others had to die. Because Snoke is right, strong roots cannot form when they are trying to grow in husks.  Luke Skywalker’s Order had been the decay necessary for new seeds to form. For true power to be reached.

He has to kill her.  
To do what he could not before.

Kylo Ren closes his eyes. Behind them, he sees the little girl, running through the forest. Laughing out a name. Then screaming it.

He shifts, extending one leg and bending the other. A sting of pain echoes with the motion, and Kylo uses it. Pain is clarifying. Pain is focus. Even when everything else becomes muddled, uncertain he knows he can trust in _pain._

It’s one thing that never lies.

He could kill his father. He can kill this girl.

Kylo Ren exhales.

She, like all the others, does not matter in the face of what is to come.

\--

He doubts.

\--

“Your thoughts are loud, Kylo Ren.” Snoke states.

They are outside, once again. Here at his temple, that is where Snoke spends most of his time. Kylo Ren can tell that the sun weakens him, that his pale form is sickly, that the pollen in the air makes his breath rasp. But there is strength in Snoke’s defiance. In his refusal to dwell in the chamber. That is what it means to be a Knight of Ren—to struggle, to know pain and to meet it again and again until the form is strong enough to take it. To live in the space where there is no resolve.

“Forgive me, Supreme Leader.”

“You are worried about the girl.”

“…yes.”

“Because she is strong? Because you are weak?”

The admonishment makes him scowl behind his mask, head tilting to look at the flowers in anger. “I will follow your orders, Supreme Leader,” he says darkly.

“If you are wise,” Snoke agrees. “If you can reach your potential, like Vader.”

Kylo has disappointed him. He watches the yellow daisies sway in the light wind.

“Vader…” Snoke continues, “Understood what it meant to live a life out of balance, Kylo Ren. He knew what it meant to gain strength from pain.”

“I killed Han Solo.” Kylo Ren counters, desperate. “I killed my father. I can kill a scavenger.”

“Vader killed the love of his life,” Snoke’s voice is calm, but there is an edge. “His brother and dearest friend. All those who raised him, taught him. Were it not for a moment of weakness, he would have killed his son and the universe would no longer be in peril. There is _value,_ Kylo Ren, to be found in death. There is power.” Snoke’s next breath is rattled. They have been in the open air too long. “Wisdom comes from loss. Passion comes from _victory._ ”

He pulls a weed from his garden. “You wish to save this galaxy, do you not?”

“Yes,” Kylo whispers.

“Then make room for it to thrive. Cut away that which burdens you, Kylo Ren. Forsake attachment, and you will see all with clearer eyes.”

“ _How._ ”

“Know that the light is not enough. Know that your pain is what will center you.” Snoke stands, resting his hand on Kylo’s shoulder. He can see its blue and green veins. “Know that compassion is giving the weak the nourishment the strong deserve. Be _better_ than your grandfather, Kylo Ren. Be _greater._ ”

“…I will.”

\--

He dreams.

\--

His mother, cradling him at night. Kissing his forehead.  
His uncle, carrying him on his back.  
His father, holding his lightsaber in his hands.

\--

Rey. Naming a plant after Ben.  
Rey. Crying at him not to go.  
Rey. Showing him the marks on her wall.

\--

The whispers sound, as he lies awake in his quarters. His eyes are trained on the ceiling, but they curl at him—small holes, wormed through. Light filters of sun.

_We have not left you._

\--

He kills a younger Knight of Ren during a spar. The man had challenged him, trying to take his position. It was a simple match. Snoke sits to the side, nodding.

“You are almost ready, Kylo Ren. Luke’s padawan will be no match.”

Kylo Ren looks down at the man in black, face obscured by a mask.

“Thank you, Supreme Leader.”

\--

He can kill her.  
He can.

\--

Kylo Ren sits on the ledge of the temple, watching as the light breaks the skyline, as the dark sky gives way to pinks and oranges. For the first time, he hears nothing—not the promises of the Dark, not the whispers of the Light.

The moment is, like all things, only something he can lose.

\--

He doesn’t think she’ll beg for her life. Curse him, spit at him, maybe. But she won’t beg.

\--

“Hux has reported to me,” Snoke begins. They are standing to the side of his garden, underneath an awning as rain pours from above. “He has a strategy that proves to be most promising for a final assault on the Resistance base.”

Kylo Ren trains his gaze ahead. “I will see your command followed, Supreme Leader.”

“Your focus is to be only on the Jedi. Leave General Organa and her ilk to Hux’s people, do you understand?”

He knows all the things that betray him: his fingers tightening into a fist, his shoulders sinking, the stifled protests of a child buried. But he keeps his voice steady. “I understand.”

Snoke does not say anything. He does not look at him.

“Then you ready for Dantooine.”

\--

Moments later, he sits.

Darth Vader’s helm stares back at him with hollow eyes.

“I…” His hand covers the bottom half of his face. Under his thumb, he feels the puckered edge of his scar. “I am lost, grandfather.”

 _Then let us bring you home,_ they whisper. Kylo grinds his teeth in pain, to clear the noise from his mind. To only hear the call of his grandfather, of what he needs to be.

“But I will not fail you,” he promises. “I will end it.”

He breathes, dark eyes flickering up with resolve.

“I will end it all.”


End file.
